Ailurophile
by Ananke Adrasteia
Summary: About a pleasant evening, cats, vampires, the desire for stability and the desire for violence. A rather pointless oneshot Mary Sue fluffiness dedicated to my spidermunching muse.


/This is an utterly pointless Mary Sue fluffiness, inspired by and dedicated to my muse, who walks about hunting and munching on spiders as I write./

---

**Ailurophile**

There was a loud thud, followed by a second one, as something heavy – two heavy something-s – landed on the windowsill.

She blinked, rose from her desk, and went to the kitchen to check what it was.

"Oh, it's you guys," she said, opening the window, "How long has it been? Six months? What have you two been up to?"

The large tabby cat, who looked as if he were on his best way to getting himself a collection of scars rivalling Nanny Ogg's Greebo, meowed. He entered through the opened window, walking proudly into the kitchen as if he owned the place, and headed straight for the place where the cat-bowl used to be. He looked at her significantly and meowed again, probably demanding to know where the bowl was, where the food was, and just why it hadn't been expecting him in the first place.

The smaller Blue Siamese hesitated for a moment in entering. He stepped carefully through the gap and then, put something down on the windowsill. Then, he looked up to her, clearly proud of himself, waiting for her reaction.

She looked closer at the gift. It was a dead rat. A rather large dead rat. (It must have been strangled recently: there wasn't a single drop of blood on its fur, and the fur itself was still shiny.)

"Oh. You brought a souvenir. How very thoughtful of you," she said, in a weak voice. In her mind, she was already surveying her extensive collection of cleaning agents. She wondered what precisely she could do to disinfect this place. She rather felt nothing would ever achieve this.

The Blue Siamese, evidently pleased with her response, jumped down from the sill, and joined the large tom on the floor.

She sighed, and headed for the fridge. There was a can of cat-food inside, which she had kept through all that time in the desperate hope that she might one day have an occasion to open it. She put out the bowl, and the food into the bowl. She then emptied a small box of dry cat food onto a plate, and poured a bit of milk into a second bowl. Finally, she looked into the fridge again.

"I'm sorry, but there is only raspberry and strawberry," she said to the Blue Siamese. "I would have bought peach if I had known you were coming. Which one do you prefer?"

The cat meowed. She sighed again, and took out the raspberry yoghurt from the fridge.

---

Sitting by the table in the corner of the kitchen, her head resting on her hand, she watched the cats eat. They must have been starving, she thought: they ate everything, even the dry food that they both abhorred.

The large tom jumped on top of the second chair, and from there, on the table. He nudged her hand, demanding to be scratched behind the ear. She complied. Her hands automatically sought the proper places, the places where, she knew, he liked to be scratched. His fur, she saw, was matted and glued together in several places by dirt and blood.

"How about if I give you a bath?" she asked in a fake friendly tone.

The cat stopped purring and visibly stiffened. "How about if I claw your eyes out?" he asked in the same manner.

On the floor, the Blue Siamese, who was now performing all the terribly gross things which cats call 'grooming', snorted.

She looked at the tabby cat evenly. "Is this the vampire or the cat talking?" she asked.

The cat looked at her curiously: golden eyes met blue. "What is the difference?" he asked. He would have probably shrugged, if he could.

"Well, if it were the vampire, then I could argue that he is not immortal here; and that while water here cannot kill him, infection well could," she replied, "There's no arguing with the cat."

The Blue Siamese jumped to her lap, demanding to be petted. "I think I would like one; well, not like – _endure_, perhaps. Really, Kain, what were you thinking? The _sewers_?"

The large tabby paid him almost no heed, his gaze still fixed on the human. "I'll do it," he declared at last, and she did all she could not to burst laughing; he really did seem to believe that it was he who was doing her the favour when he agreed. "But on one condition. You will accept Raziel's gift."

"The rat?" she asked. "I'm grateful for it," she added, "I really am. But what am I supposed to do with it?"

The smaller cat lashed its tail impatiently. "Whatever you want to. Eat it. Cook it. Dissect it."

---

Vampires and cats were really very much alike, she mused. Vicious, cruel killers who enjoyed playing with their prey; but it was all right with humans, because they were also graceful and elegant and beautiful and powerful, and humans were just so wired that they loved beauty and power–

In any case, both vampires and cats abhorred water. And, although the vampires in the cats had agreed to let the human wash them, the cats in the vampires still left several claw marks on her skin. She sterilised the wounds, both hers and the cats', with hydrogen peroxide; they hissed at her. Then, the three of them sat on the floor; she petted the cats, and they told her the cat-tales of walking rooftops by night, hunting and killing. There was much killing in the stories.

It was, all in all, a very pleasant evening.

---

Raziel nudged her chin with his head, "A copper for your thoughts?"

She looked at him, and said, "More than a fair price. I'm just wondering what it would be like–" Ashamed, she looked to the floor.

"You know that the offer still stands," he replied quietly.

She flashed the cat a brief, bitter smile – more a grimace than a smile, really. "No. You know why."

"I may know, but I certainly don't _understand_."

"What _is_ there to understand?" a third voice joined the conversation. Kain had woken up and was now stretching himself; all his claws were fully extended. "She's scared of making her life interesting, that's all. After all, one has to take risks to lead an interesting life. So, she's wondering, and that is all she'll ever do. Raziel, we're leaving."

The Blue Siamese seemed to pay no heed to the last sentence. "Is it true?" he asked, crooking his head.

"From his point of view, of course," she replied.

"And from yours?"

"Little one," she said, putting a finger under his chin so that he would look her in the eyes, "do you remember the time when you were the weak one? I'm a weak one _all the time_. In a society, a society which has equality and a measure of security as its basic tenets, I can survive. Out there – some tom would probably rape me in the matter of days. And if there are three things in my life I don't want, they are rape, abortion and litter."

"Oh," he said. "You're a female," he added, as though only now he understood this.

She smiled through tears. Vampires and cats were rather egalitarian in this regard: humans were to them only sources of food, and so, gender did not really matter for them.

"Yes. I'm female."

"But I have seen she-cats fight. One clawed Kain right across the nose–" In his corner of the floor, Kain assumed an indignant expression.

"I have seen two she-cats die in labour because they came to me too late," she replied calmly. "And they were two she-cats who were my close friends. He is right: it's time for you to go."

---

The cats went their way, as it is the cat-thing to do. They did not say when, or if, they would return. It is also the cat-thing to do.

It is, in general, the cat-thing to be mysterious: even now, she did not know how they had become cats, or why, when they had first wound their ways into her house, they had decided to adopt her into their lives. On her part, she had never asked. If they ever felt she needed to know this, she knew, they would tell her.

And now, they were gone, and all that was left were several cat-bowls, some trash, and a dead rat on her kitchen windowsill. She cleaned the cat-bowls, dried them and put them back into the cupboard, just in case they ever decided to come back. Tomorrow, she must remember to buy some cat-food. Then, she put on thin latex gloves, covered the kitchen table with a bit of plastic, and pulled out a scalpel from a drawer. She disinfected the scalpel by putting it into vodka (unfortunately, she did not have refined spirit) and then into the flame of her kitchen. She made a trial cut, and then started to dissect the dead rat.

She did so very inexpertly: she had only cut up an animal several times in her life. But even she could not help but notice that the rat had something stuck up in its oesophagus. She pulled it out. It was a human finger with a silver ring on it. The finger had been cleanly bitten off at the base. She knew the ring.

_I hope that the bitch suffered as they killed her_, she thought. _I hope that they clawed her eyes out._

A strange tenderness filled her heart.


End file.
